Hitchhikers guides to selling a car...

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So our time in New Zealand has come to an end...And what an end it has been! There are certain things I have noticed about Kiwis during my time here...I will take a moment to pen some of these thoughts and observations;

They like to drive with their fog lights on (with or without fog)
They like to grow fruit and vege the size of your head
They like to shorten words - e.g. 'w' we would say 'double-ewe', they say 'dub'
They have some crazy traffic rules that hopefully will be out of my system by the time of my return to Britain or I'll cause chaos!

So we left Wellington and headed to Napier. It was quite hilly. The car was oozing - more like letting flow freely - a toxic coloured liquid from somewhere. We pushed through with no more than the usual problems on route. We arrived. Napier is an interesting place. It was largely destroyed in an earthquake and had to be rebuilt. They did so in the stylee of the moment which happened to be art deco. A colourful joint to say the least! Unfortunately for Napier, it does not have much else to offer, so after a lovely night on the beach again, we left for Taupo. We had a spoon in the flat back in Ch.ch with Taupo on it and it had always looked nice on this spoon. I can now report that it's even better than the spoon made out! Beautiful lake (very big), big fish statues, the most visited natural attraction in NZ (which happens to be a small blue waterfall, which if you ask me should not be the most visited feature...it's nice, but not amazing) and some nice free spots to sleep in.

We were using Taupo as a base for the Tongarino national park - one of the oldest in the world (either 2nd or 4th...there seems to be some controversy depending on whome you ask). We did the Tongarino crossing which is meant to be one of the best 1 day hikes you can do in the world. We'd wanted to do the 4 day route, but the tick and tock of the plane calling prevented such frivalous uses of time. We'd timed it perfectly...Friends who had previously done the crossing had had just 1 piece of advice for us; don't go on a windy day. Weather man said it'd be a lovely morn, with a front moving in after lunch. Therefore, we opted for the 'early bird departure' in order to miss the front of doom. 5am and we were on the bus. 8 am the clouds lifted from the valley as we walked past the mountain that is Mt Doom, in the LOTR films. 8:05 am, the front arrived early and the clouds lowered. By the time we got to the top of the 'devils staircase' (named so in an ironic this is a really easy, flat walk kind of way...not), we were inside the cloud and above the freezing point. This is where we would remain for the rest of the day.

The return bus was at 3pm or 4:30pm. Everyone had finished by 1:30 as it had been to chuffing cold to have a leisurely lunch, get your camera out or enjoy the non-existant view of the volcanic craters we were climbing through. Angela even had icicles in her fuzzy bits! We sat around chatting in the sunshine that was at the bottom of the valley when you're not inside the cloud and killed some time. Met some nice vets from Wales. We did a couple of smaller danders in the area with greater success and stayed in a proper campsite, complete with peacocks, ducks, free cakes and a cat who put a huge hole in the side of the tentwhen chasing the light from the torch on the canvas. We were forced to shake our fists at it.

Sulphiric gasses in our next stop...nice. Rotorua translated must mean 'the town that smells of egg'. At least it wasn't angela making the smells any more. Thermal pools, geysers and bubbling mud kept us entertained for a couple of days. Even the main park in the middle of this city had steam rising from water holes as you were advised to 'keep to the paths - thermal activity and volcanic instability'. There were kids playing football right next to them. Excellent plan. We even went to the hot beach where you dig a hole and hey presto, have a personal spa. The only thing about this is that there are about a gazzilion and one tourists crammed into an area the size of a rounders pitch or something. It was highly amusing as the water was boiling in places so you´d just see people leap upwards at times like that game for kids where there´s wormscatapillars in an apple and they rise up and down and you have to grab them. It was like that. We picked up a French hitchiker on our way back. this is the 1st hitcher that Angela has allowed me to pick up in a while because we managed to fit all our stuff in the boot for the 1st time, so it was relatively tidy. I´m not sure hitch-hikers can be picky; beggars can´t be choosers and all that, but apparently it embarrases her to have a messy car. Anyways, he was lov-er-ly, but did not have the usual stories to entertain us, as I´ve come to expect from hikers ofthe hitching variety. To be fair, he had the only speaker in the car in his ear...but still! He also had to contend with me driving up (and then down) a particularly wiggly mountain range, so perhaps by the time we had to stop at the top because I could smell burning on the engine, he was too scared to talk!

Onwards to the Bay of island where we saw fish of the most bootiful nature - reds and yellows and pinks and greens, purples and orange and blue...mostly blue though, with yellow dots. That night we stayed in Colville on a farm. It was pure dead amazing likes...We road on a quadbike - 9 of us at once, we milked a cow using vaseline, we collected eggs from the chooks and had eggy bread, fed pigs, and we were taught how to spin wool. Jam packed fun and educational!

From there we went to the observatory in 1 Tree Hill (no joke!), Auckland, where we learnt about the southern sky...I´m now pretty much as good as the astronomers on my facts. We looked through a telescope sooooo big, that if it banged you on the head, you´d be hospitalised with concussion, and that when we looked through it we could see the rings of Saturn...mega cool. We also managed to get stuck in a traffic jam at 11 pm on a Fri night. This meant no partyage for us. Our window had magically got jammed about 1 inch from closing. Grrrr. We stopped to try and fix this (by putting it down hoping that it would free the up). The window was now stuck all the way down. Hmmm. I bought some doughnuts to try and help the situation. It didn´t work. That night we slept in the frost with a towel and a rollmat jammed in the space that was once our window. Toasty warm.

Next morning we went to the garage. They looked at it and said the mechanism was beyond repair - to put it mildly. We got them to remove the handle and jam it up and continued towards the most northern point of NZ. 21 km of gravel roads greeted us... and a lighthouse. The Maori´s believe that when they die, their spirits come to this place and down through the roots of a singular tree here into the spirit world. I saw no evidence of casper, but will double check the photos in case. We played on giant sand dunes getting way puffed out on the way up, but having lots of fun on the way down before we had to head back down to Auckland to try and sell old grey banger. Checked into a hostel (= hot showers). Went to a ´backpackers car auction´, where you´re guaranteed to sell it. There didn´t seem to be any customers, so we went to look round the city. No car bites that day. Next day we decided we´d spend 2 precious hours sat there trying to flog it. No customers again (well, 2 actually, but both didn´t even look at our car). It was the most depressing 2 hours of the trip yet. Everyone´s just sat there staring into space and waiting. Never go to one of these places. It will kill your soul. We were flying out the next day. We still hadn´t sold it.

We made the decision to take it to the hostel that night and try to give it away. The car hadn´t moved in 2 days, so when we tried to get it going it kept stalling and emitting rather black clouds of smoke into the confined space of the garage. People choked. It was the most embarrassing thing that´s happened to me in a while as I had to direct Angela out of the small parking space, like a traffic warden, and then jump into it whilst it was still moving so we could keep it going. To make matters worse, there was a rather toxic looking puddle (maybe engine coolant? It was greeny-yellow) left behind. All the other car owners were laughing at us.

We tried to sell it...give it away...donate it to the scrappy´s and the salvation army. No takers. At the final hour, a guy called and when he found out we were leaving in a matter of hours wanted to meet us. With me as navigator, we (eventually) found the carpark of the specified supermarket for him to have a look at it. We had a little bit of nervousness in our tummies. HE BOUGHT IT!!! Relief. We now had some extra money to play with before the plane, most of which I used to send boxes of junk I´ve collected on the travels, homewards.


We went to get our airport transfer, which was well and truly late. We´d arranged to share with this German dude (they were all German at the hostel...no one spoke English). Whilst we were waiting he demonstrated his guitarsinging capabilities - I cringed. It was the most horrible rendition of the house overthe hill, that I´ve ever heard. Transfer did turn up, and the jolliest Indian I´ve ever met took us to the airport. And that, was that. No more New Zealand.

Now I´ll have to dust off the Spanish dictionary and see what happens in Chile.

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Photos

a hike and a half
A 5 ft nothing Angela for scale in a vast landscape

NZ - you get fruit the size of your head...
...and bigger! Cromwell - it has fruit and not much else

What can you see inside the box
It's and Angela (a.k.a. Porky)

Steaming...
No, not us. Thermal pools galore!

What's that behind you?
Geyser

Blimey...That's the biggest kiwi fruit I've ever seen!
We were in kiwi country...get it? Kiwi the people and the fruit?

game for y'all...
see how many languages you can determine on this here piccy...answers to rhiannon for marking.

Comments

[Daphne]

time has flown
Thankyou for all your news of N.Z. I hope you enjoy S. America as much as John did. He will be interested to hear your comments. He will be home until the end of June when he hopes some adventure WORK will be available!! Take care, Love, Me.